The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is meeting in Chicago this week, 50 years after the gavel fell at the 1968 Democratic convention in that city. On the DNC’s agenda is a decisive vote on what to do about the party’s “superdelegates.”

SELINA VICKERS, (304) 663-3037, emailtheselina at gmail.com, @SelinaVickers
West Virginia activist Selina Vickers, a delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, is at the DNC meeting in Chicago to advocate for superdelegate reform. She has been fasting since last Saturday.

She said today: “This isn’t a hunger strike. It isn’t a religious or health fast. It isn’t even a protest. My decision to not eat is a physical expression of the hunger that I feel for change. I hope and expect to have my hunger sated by the passing of the superdelegate reform on Saturday… I’ve traveled, advocated, educated, started a blog, live-streamed — all I can think to do to push the end of superdelegates.  Now, I had my last meal last Saturday and I won’t eat until after the superdelegate vote this Saturday. It’s all I can think to do to boldly underscore the importance of this critical issue.

“I’ve been waiting for the DNC meeting this Saturday since July 2016. That’s when the DNC (Democratic National Convention) delegates, of which I was one, unanimously passed a resolution to make major reforms within the DNC, most importantly to me, superdelegate reform. Many voters in the 2016 Democratic primary had their vote eliminated by a few very powerful superdelegates. My personal example, the West Virginia Superdelegate Disaster, is that even though Sen. Sanders won all 55 counties in the West Virginia primary, after the superdelegates weighed in, Clinton won West Virginia with only 36 percent of the vote.”